54 Of The Creepiest Creatures From Other Countries Folklore

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Here in Norway we have a lot of legendary creatures, but Draugen is probably one of the creepiest. Though descriptions of it tend to differ from place to place and story to story, the general concept of it is pretty much the same everywhere:

Draugen is, essentially, the ghost of a person who has died at sea. He can be seen on stormy nights, sailing in the splintered half of a boat with shredded sails. His face is fish-like, with soulless, black eyes and a wide, gaping mouth, and he has kelp and seaweed for hair. Sailors and fishermen foolish enough to head out to sea at night may hear only its shriek before they are pulled beneath the waves, only to return as Draugen themselves, doomed to haunt the waters forever.

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Here in Sweden I think the two spookiest ones are Näcken, a naked old man that lives in rivers and ponds and plays a violin that places you into a trance. He then lures you into whatever source of whatever he lives in and drowns you.

The second one is the Skogsrå, who’d be a lot creepier if it wasn’t for the fact that she doesn’t really do all that much. She looks like a beautiful woman from the front, but her back looks like a rotten treetrunk with a hole in it. She lurks near the edges of deep forests and tries to seduce men. If you treat her well you’ll be bestowed with luck, but if you treat her badly you will be tormented by disease and death.

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Black Annis – In a grim, remote Leicestershire cave hewn with her own scraping, steel-clawed hands, the old crone Black Annis was said to hang the trophy skins of flayed children. A terrifying, lonely creature which lived in the branches of a gnarled great oak- the lone remnant of a long-dead great forest- Black Annis was thought to have been the husk of a forgotten dark Pagan Goddess. This is what she looks like http://therichest.imgix.net/2016/05/Black_Annis.jpg?auto=format&q=90&lossless=1&w=1000&h=1319&fit=crop

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The will o’ the wisp is a strange light that lures hikers off of trails until they are lost. It’s not as terrifying, but pretty creepy. The folklore is possibly related to a real phenomenon in which people hallucinate when in the wild for long enough, and can wander randomly off the trail. This is also linked to people seeing strange lights, particularly in swamps, in which there are bioluminescent insects and flora, as well as swamp gas. This myth has variatons from several continents.

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In northern Canada there’s a creature called the wendigo. It used to be a person that once upon a time tainted his/her soul and ate human flesh. The wendigo became so consumed with flesh after that that it became insatiable. all attempts it makes at feeding itself grows the wendigo and doesn’t satiate it. They are said to have eaten their own lips because they just couldn’t resist.

As the legends go you should be careful while walking the forests. As the wendigo might capture you and eat you. But it won’t just eat you in one go. It’s used to hunger. It’ll keep you alive as long as possible so that it has a food source for as long as it can during the winter.

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We have a creature called a Kuri. It is known to wait near graves of people who have died on the moor. If you walk passed one of these graves, it will latch on to you.

It slowly convinces you of its existence over the course of weeks, if not months. First you may hear a faint whisper in your ear. You may dream of it or feel a cool touch on the back of your neck. Over time its presence will start become more known. It will grab your leg in the night, start attacking you in your dreams, transpose its face onto your family members as you’re talking to them.

It will never make itself known to anyone else, making you question your own sanity. It will start talking to you, asking you to go back to the moorland, promising you your freedom back if you do. Eventually, once the mental torment gets too much, you give in and wonder back out to the moors. It will keep telling you you’re almost there, allowing you to wonder aimlessly around. Eventually, exhaustion will strike you and you will be forced to watch your body succumb to the elements. As you lie there, unable to lift a finger, the Kuri tells you how much it will enjoy dragging your soul to hell. And like that, another grave is created.

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I’m from Scotland and we have quite a few. There are ones that I find not so much creep but definitely odd haha.

Such as the Wulver, he was described as a man covered with brown hair on his body and having the head of a wolf. Though he was not malicious, apparently he was fond of fishing and would do so for hours even leaving fish on the windowsills of poor families.

And there is the Selkie, similar to a mermaid I suppose. These creatures had the skin of a seal but could shed them when they came to land. They often came to land to have children with the men there, only going back to find there skin and return to the ocean.

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In South Africa it is common for native Africans to sleep with their bed on top of bricks or other device to raise the bed. They believe in a creature called the Tokalosh which sits on your chest while you sleep and steals your breath causing you to gasp for air or even die. This is how it was described to me by my parents and saw multiple Africans beds which were abnormally high off the ground.

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